The Never Ending Friday...

Last week was ‘Nurses Week’ and we had a pretty rough/hectic week in general (which you can read some about in my last blog) but our Friday, was the icing on the cake. We just got a donation of new laptops for the clinic and they got them up and running so Friday was our first trial with them. It was a terrible mess!! The computers were not working and it created worse problems than before when we were using the old ones! We had to paper chart, we couldn’t look up old info, we had to handwrite all the pharmacy labels and I could go on and on! Basically the day was chaos x100 because of the computer issues. Only blessing was that we didn’t have as many patients as usual. It was just a really tough day that capped a tough week and we were so glad to go home at the end of the day.

We had barely arrived home and I had just sat down to have a nap (Kate & Alisha were hanging out in our living room & still in their scrubs), when we heard Adam (another volunteer) yelling for help!! So we headed down to the street to see what the matter was and found a whole bunch of our neighbours were very distraught. Alfa; a 60 something year old neighbour of ours from down the alley, collapsed on her upstairs porch and they were calling for help. We arrived on the scene and found her unresponsive, not breathing and we couldn’t get a palpable pulse. From what we could understand from the family, she had just gotten up to grab something from the fridge and collapsed and it was probably about 5 mins before we got there. She has a cardiac history and was a known patient at the clinic. But basically as soon as we discovered she was not breathing, we started CPR. We did rounds of CPR while we others called for help and discovered the ambulance was too far away, so they found a person with a random truck. We moved her down to the truck (carried her on a sheet) and then we continued CPR on the back of a pickup truck driving at scary high speeds to the local hospital. I was pretty sure on our way there that our efforts would not be successful, and sadly the hospital doesn’t have a defibrillator anyway, but this is what the family wanted and we were not about to stop compressions. So we took her to the hospital and they unloaded her into a bed but they didn’t really tend to her, they just put some oxygen in her nose and shooed us out of the room. It was difficult for us to let it go because we wanted to give report to someone and ensure that things were continuing... but they just kicked us out onto the street and locked the door. We heard later that they declared her deceased shortly after arrival at the hospital and ruled cause of death a massive heart attack. But we did what we were trained to do and did our best. We provided the best care possible and if nothing else, we acted which gave the family the chance to feel as though they did everything they could.. and it gave her a bit of dignity not to be left in her home around a crowd of concerned neighbours and family members who had come to gawk. I'm proud of our efforts even if they were unsuccessful and I would do it again if the situation arose again.. although it has been discouraging that some at the clinic disagree with our decision to step in and figure it was a waste of time. Oh well, I can only be responsible for me.. and I am totally comfortable with my decision to use my skills to aid the patient.. again, even if it was unsuccessful. 

Interesting continuation of that story is that after being kicked out of the hospital we realized that we are all wearing scrubs (well I was wearing gym shorts and a tank top..) but none of us had pockets, little alone money! So we weren’t sure how we’d cab home! We ended up taking a cab and getting the driver to wait while I ran down the alley to grab money and then return and pay him. Saddest thing was that as I ran by Ms Alfa’s house, a young boy stopped me and asked “What happened to my mama? Where is she?” (Note: they often call their mom & grandmother or whoever is raising them mama)... and all I could do is tell him was that we took her to the hospital. It was heart breaking.

So after the whole situation was over, we returned to our apartment but we were exhausted and still pumped on adrenaline! We decided to continue with our evening plans to meet some friends for supper at the local Thai restaurant. So we headed out for supper and when we walked past the house we were informed of her passing. Then later that night when we walked back by, we got to experience some of the local grieving traditions as many friends and family gathered to remember her and celebrate the great life she lived. It was sad for us too because she was such a permanent fixture in the neighbourhood. She always smiled and said good morning as we walked to clinic etc. It was also hard because it was the first time Kate & Alisha had truly experience death like that and been so closely involved in it.

So as if our Friday wasn’t chaotic enough already, the clinic ended up getting a pediatric inpatient admission over suppertime. We were called in to work a shift and they were struggling to find someone to work the night so I ended up working the overnight shift. So I spent a full day at clinic, then had our crazy CPR experience then supper, then I went and worked the night at the clinic. My body wasn’t really sure what to do! I was absolutely wrecked the next day.. my muscles ached from the compressions, my body craved sleep and I was just frustrated with the way the whole week had gone! We had experienced a lot of disrespect from other clinic people this week and it’s been hard to deal with and then it came to a crazy climax on Friday. I came home on Saturday morning, slept 2.5 hours then got up and continued with my Saturday plans as usual, like making jewellery with some local girls at Bob & Debi’s. By the time Saturday night came, I was fit to be tied! They tried to call me back in for the second night but I just couldn’t. I was exhausted!!

Sunday was spent seeking God and His will in all this craziness! I have been getting discouraged for awhile and He has been the only thing keeping me sane.. but Friday certainly stretched my limits. I know God won’t press us further than we can bear but I think I’ve been gaining a new appreciation for that! And it is certainly His strength not mine that is getting me through because I gave up trying to do this with my strength, patience, endurance, energy and love... a VERY long time ago!! It has been a hard week and harder weekend, but He knows what is best and I’m hoping that there will be much good come from this in the long run. Overall, its been quite an adventure!

We are here for just two weeks more, who knows what might be in store for this last bit... well, I’ve got a 13 days left to find out! :) Bring it on!

Blessings among the bad luck!

 (This is the blog post I wrote on Thursday and planned to post on Friday.. but my Friday turned into a crazy day!! So I'm posting this now, but I'll write a new post about Friday tomorrow, so stay tuned...)

This past week or so I’ve been learning a lot about perspective.. and how I need to aim to be optimistic and seek to have God’s perspective because He sees the big picture and I don’t. Its been a rough week and a fantastic week all rolled into one! I’ve been having a bit of a string of bad luck recently… several weeks ago was the car accident and then since then my Kobo (E reader) has just broken entirely (will need to be sent back with warranty when I return home), I discovered that the grocery store over-charged me by $600 (accidently charged me $600 USD by accident rather than the $60 I should have paid.. someone probably accidentally pushed an extra number on the credit card machine.. but that’s a lot of money to me.. and even more in Honduras with roughly a 20limp:1US conversion) and my credit card was stolen. The tricky part was I needed to sort out the grocery store issue before cancelling the card because if I cancelled the card I’d never get my refund, but trying to explain to the Honduran cashier about the error in Spanish was miserable.  Last Thursday, I ended up on a ridiculous adventure that involved a dodgy cab ride to another city and talking with person after person in the administration at of the grocery store; only to be told that I might get my refund… but it certainly won’t be for another 4 weeks or so… (and we leave in less than 3 weeks..) and while I was on this adventure, the credit card caper was spending more and more money.. then I tried to call VISA Canada, on their emergency/lost & stolen card line, and they told me they couldn’t talk to me since I was on a cell phone.. so after several phone calls to them and a lot of frustration I got the card cancelled. Long and the short of the story, I am praying that I’ll get my refund, waiting for VISA to do an official fraud investigation and I survived a dodgy cab ride mostly by talking about my fictional husband waiting for me.

Kate & the little bundle of joy!

I made it back home just a few mins late for tutoring so I tutored as usual. Then I was exhausted, starving (because I went straight from clinic on my grocery store adventure without eating lunch and forgot my water bottle and had only enough cash for my cab.. so no food or water) and frustrated! I was ready to get home to rest when we got a call about a patient who was in labour!! So we turned around and headed straight back to the clinic to help deliver the baby! After about 3 hours of labouring at the clinic, our patient delivered a healthy baby girl at 7lbs, 1oz! I was helping look after the mom but Kate was totally in her element doing the baby stuff!! She took care of the baby after the delivery and was really helpful in deciding the baby needed suctioning etc and she was helping to teach the Honduran new grad more about labour and delivery/postpartum nursing care. All in all a great experience! So glad we could finally be there for a birth and it was a huge blessing!! We arrived home really late and basically collapsed into our beds! Tuesday was an incredibly long day with some really low/frustrating moments and some really exciting/beautiful moments all rolled into one!!

fresh new baby! :)

Saturday we went on a little adventure to French Key which involved several public buses, and a long walk to the dock where we took a little boat to a secluded island for the day! We had such a great time! Kate, Alisha, Megan, Jessy and I went and we met up with Angely (our receptionist at the clinic) and we really enjoyed the day of bonding and relaxing. Then after supper we just stayed in and watched a movie but I got to do some sewing for the girls. I made some alterations and repairs and it was so nice to be sewing again!! It’s certainly something I miss!

 

Monday Kate and I hosted a ‘Nacho Night’ at our house as a chance for all the volunteers (new and old) to hangout apart from clinic (with our titles aside and just chill/get to know each other!) I really love hosting people so I had so much fun preparing for this! Some of the volunteers asked if I could make red velvet cake, so I decided to give it a whirl! I’ve never actually even tasted it before… but I figured why not? So I made 2 different batches from recipes I found online (one from a big US cooking network and the other from Canadian Living magazine.. so it was semi a battle of which country has better recipes too!) So I baked 2 cakes, and we had a whole feast of nacho dip, baked nachos with chicken, rice, guacamole etc. Quite a few of the volunteers came over and we had a super fun night that ended with a pretty intense game of Dutch Blitz!!

Tuesdays we tutor and afterwards it has become our tradition to go to trivia hosted by a local pub. The clinic usually has enough people to enter several teams and despite our impressive collective education levels.. we suck at random trivia! But we always have a blast despite coming dead last!

This Wednesday we had an end of the year party with our tutoring kids!! We invited them over afterschool to bake cookies and make homemade pizza with us! It was so much fun! These kids had never baked before at all and they had such a great time measuring and stirring!! We had a few fun mishaps along the way, like accidentally adding double the baking soda.. so we just doubled the entire recipe! Interestingly enough, they were all super grossed out by the idea of forming chocolate chip cookies into balls with their hands!!

They thought the texture of cookie dough was gross and slimy! But they eventually warmed up to the idea! And their cookies turned out fantastic!! The pizza was similar; they all had a blast working together to make it and even more fun eating it! Then we took them outside to the beach in front of our house and taught them to swim. Many of these kids live within a mile of the ocean but cannot swim and are very afraid of it (I think it’s a cultural thing for parents to teach their kids to fear the water because it keeps them from trying to swim when they can’t but it is sad because they are missing out on so much fun!) So we borrowed a bunch of life jackets and all jumped in! We taught them some of the basics of swimming and then just swam around together! 

me & Esmerelda

(FYI: Kate & I are wearing life jackets in the pics for three reasons: 1) it makes it ‘cool’ to wear one, 2) we proved that they actually hold you up for the skeptical kids and 3) it made it easier to support the weight of the kids who clung to us because the jacket was keeping us up somewhat. We can both swim on our own, I swear!) So overall, it was a day of learning, of first times and of making sweet memories!! It certainly made my day and blessed my heart to be able to love those kids and bless them with the fun and the food! :) 

   

Clinic these past two weeks has been a chaotic blur!  We have a ton of new volunteers and they need to be orientated plus for the last few days of last week the local public hospital was on strike (which seriously increased our patient load!) We have been having serious computer issues and this is causing a lot of chaos and headache! I’m trying to be optimistic and just focus on the big picture! I think it’s interesting that God seems to always provide blessing and hardship together, but we often get tunnel vision and only see the negative. Like today for example what very chaotic at clinic with two really sick patients that needed to be taken to the hospital (woman with tonsillary abscess who was septic and a young woman visibly pregnant who was bleeding profusely). However, we also provided a lot of great care and helped a lot of people and we had a fun reminder of the good things of life when the baby we helped deliver came to clinic for her one week checkup. (Side note: guess what they named her? Emily!! I’m sure it had nothing to do with me.. but I can wish! And it is my spelling too, not the Hispanic spelling.. so who knows! Lol! But I doubt it!) The baby is adorable, healthy and happy! The mom couldn’t be prouder to bring her in to see us! It certainly made my day! Some people only see the chaos but I’m learning to step back and try to take it all in.. the bad, the good and everything in between! And usually I’m left feeling more positive and optimistic than ever!

A little taste of May...

Life here has been rolling on as usual. Kate and I have a pretty normal routine with work, tutoring and other things we do in our afternoons. Clinic has been really busy so we haven’t had much free time in the afternoons and most evenings I’m beat, so we have been resting and just hanging out. We have made some really fantastic friends here and its been fun to live in community and share/learn from one another. Several times a week we have people over to the house for supper and we usually end up all cooking together! It’s fun to learn how to make other peoples favorite dishes and to teach them how to make ours.. we have quite a following for our layered nacho dip! Lol. I’m more of a baker than a cook and I’ve been baking up a storm! I’m having fun experimenting with the local ingredients and substitutions. Plus it’s fun to bake all the desserts I used to love making with mom when I was little.. and share them with my friends here because many of them have never heard of them. Nanaimo squares, O’henry squares and carrot cake have been among my latest attempts.. and my usual: brownies and ice cream. So I’m constantly hosting the other volunteers over for dessert because I need to eat up what I’ve made to free up the pans to make more! Our house has been full of people and I’ve really enjoyed getting to know and working with so many great people! I’m getting to share life with some beautiful new friends and really being blessed by the outcomes!

Kate and I recently learned what ‘May day’ is. May day is celebrated the first of May and is a local holiday here, so we got a day off clinic! However, apparently in the US, some people celebrate May day by giving their friends and loved ones secret gifts.. usually you would leave a gift on your friend’s porch, ring the bell and run… if the recipient catches you, then they have to give you a kiss. Kate and I were just settling in for the night when we heard our doorbell ring. I went down to get it but had to kill a cockroach before I could get the door open.. and when I did, there was no one to be found.. there was however, two ice cold pop (our fav flavors too!) with little ribbons tied to them!! We were a bit bewildered until we googled ‘may day traditions’ and realized that our American friends must be playing a little ‘May day’ mischief!! :) It certainly made my day!! And although I was technically too late to catch the culprit and give them a kiss … we politely reciprocated with a few of the Hershey’s kind today! :)

We have such a great group of friends here and seem to turn everything into an adventure! Hitchhiking into town to get groceries, liquados (milkshakes) in the market, going to trivia at a local resort on Tuesday nights, bartering with shopkeepers as we buying goods/souvenirs, and riding in sketchy taxis/buses (sometimes the back door flies open or we lose our spare tire in the road..etc). We are always up to something fun and crazy!

Camilla the birthday girl!

 Clinic has been super busy recently so we’ve been working super hard, but also playing hard during our downtime! We got to experience a typical local birthday party on Sunday. The clinic administrator’s daughter, Camilla turned one and she invited us all to the party! They hosted the party in the lawn at the clinic because there is a fun swing set for the kids to play on and they set up the waiting room chairs for the adults to socialize too. There was a bunch of typical Honduran snack foods and tacos for the meal!

little Krista taking a whack (Raul in background)

 And a beautiful Dora the Explorer cake and piñata!! We had a hoot watching all the kids take their turn at the piñata. Raul, our security guard at the clinic (who happens to be very ‘grandfatherly’) was the one holding/pulling up the piñata and it seemed to me that he was having more fun than the kids were!! We had such a blast and it was fun to be treated like family and welcomed into their celebration! Feliz Cumpleanos Camilla!! And in typical clinic style, we had a random patient stumble upon us at the party who had a fresh machete wound that needed attention. So a few of us slipped away from the festivities to clean, stitch and dress his wound, and give him a quick tetanus shot before we sent him on his way again! Then back to the party we went, as if we hadn’t missed a thing! :)

nasty pneumonia Xray

We have certainly been busy bees at the clinic recently! We have had a couple births in the last few weeks ( all of which Kate & I didn’t get called to! Unfortunately! ) and several pediatric inpatients (some who only needed IVs during the day and others stayed overnight). I have been taking the overnight shifts because I really don’t mind nights (after lots of practice during my time on Unit1) and my body seems to adapt to them fairly well. So that has been a new adventure, doing night shifts at clinic and sleeping during the day (which is way harder here where it is always over 30 degrees in our room! And everyone else is doing fun stuff outdoors!) It’s a bit trickier here than home because we are always kind of ‘on call’ and never know when we might need to keep an inpatient.. both the last two weekends we have had to take shifts in the inpatient unit. 

This last weekend, we had a really sick 8yr old girl with a bad pneumonia. We took really good care of her for days but it ended up that the island just can’t provide the level of care she needed ( her respiratory status was deterioriating and they can’t do ABG’s here.. and she started bradying down to the 60’s with the occasional PVC.. which is not a good scene!) so we transferred her to a hospital on the mainland. I just love watching God provide the people we need at the right times though! We have a new volunteer, Doreen, in for just two weeks who is an old Peds ICU nurse, and she was such a valuable resource and help during this girl’s admission!! And God has been really faithful to provide donation-wise too! We are getting low on some really essential things in the pharmacy like children’s liquid acetaminophen.. but we always get a few more bottles, just as we are about to run completely out! And we just got 10 bottles yesterday, and that same day we had a baby come in having febrile seizures!! (so the liquid Tylenol and the box of acetaminophen suppositories we just had donated last week.. were essential in that baby’s care!J) Clinic is so blessed with God’s favor in donations of supplies, money and people’s time! When I sit back and think about all that people are investing in the ministry of the clinic it AMAZES me!! We have a full scale medical facility! We provide a great learning opportunity for many students while simultaneously serving a large and diverse client population!! How cool is that!!

Lately I’ve been getting bogged down with all the hecticness of clinic! Some days it just seems like it’s one thing after another.. charts get misplaced, doctors don’t show up, we are running low on certain meds, there is someone throwing up in the waiting room, patients are complaining about the wait, the kid with chickenpox is touching everything (potential contaminating things b/c he is contagious), the computer goes down, and the list goes on and on.. But when I sat back this morning and reflected on what the clinic actually does, I couldn’t help but smile! Despite all the chaos and headache and frustration to me (and the other staff)... we serve between 60-80patients on any given day. We provide North American standard health care in the midst of a corrupt third world country, for a minimal cost the patient can afford (and never refuse care if they can’t pay). At the end of the day, we have taken a lot of vitals, seen a lot of patients, prescribed/filled/passed and educated on a lot of meds... overall provided a lot of great care, showed a lot of love and I think, made a difference in at least one person’s life. So for me, it’s worth it.. and I need to remember that. This reminds me why I’m a nurse! That I have a passion for caring for others and making a difference, even if it is one patient at a time! I love this… I will add that I certainly don’t love every day, or every case or every patient.. but at its core, I love this. And the bonus is, I’m learning so much about life, nursing and about myself in the mean time too!!  I’m just so blessed to be right where I am, doing what I love every day and hopefully making a difference…